


this must be the place

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Canon, all kinds of canon and non-canon tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: Pop’s had always been the place where Jughead came to escape the rest of the world, to retreat into his headphones and his laptop and his bottomless cup of coffee and block out everything else. Including pretty girls with blinding white smiles and the brightest green eyes he’s ever seen in his life.Now it’s the place where he comes five nights a week to flip burgers and earn the cash he’s squirreling away so that he can – fingers crossed – transfer to a four-year program to earn his B.A. once he’s done his final semester at the community college. But he still has those moments of escape from time to time, moments when the rest of the world fades away: when he’s deep into his pre-shift prep routine, or when his favorite song comes on over the speakers, an old Solomon Burke tune he’d first heard as a kid, right here in the diner itself.When he’s lost in a conversation with Betty, so caught up in her words that he doesn’t even notice a burger patty getting a little too charred on the grill behind him.(Or, five times Betty and Jughead met up at Pop's.)





	this must be the place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sullypants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/gifts).



_home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there_

**one**

_Fifteen minutes_ , Betty tells herself, _is not that late._

It’s about a ten minute drive from their neighborhood to Pop’s, but sometimes, when there’s traffic, it can take twenty. Maybe his dad asked him to take the dog on a quick walk, or wash the dishes before he left.

(Then again, it’s Saturday evening, not a high-traffic time of day in Riverdale. And if Archie were leaving for Pop’s from his house, wouldn’t he have offered to give Betty a ride, too?)

From the corner of her eye she can see Pop himself giving her a sympathetic look from behind the counter, and she picks up her phone, scrolling through Instagram mindlessly even as her cheeks grow hot. There’s no reason for Pop to feel _bad_ for her. Her friend is just running late. It’s fine.

Her server stops by the table, one hand on her hip, looking bored. “Sure I can’t get you anything while you’re waiting?”

“No,” Betty says, “I’m fine with water,” and that’s when her phone buzzes.

_Can’t make it tonight after all, got some family stuff going on. Sorry! I’ll make it up to you!_

She stares down at the screen for a long moment, the words not fully processing at first. After a pause, she blinks up at the waitress. “Um – actually, I’m…I have to go.”

The girl says something in response, but Betty doesn’t hear her, a buzzing sound between her ears drowning out everything else in the low-lit diner. Her stomach twists unpleasantly, any desire for a burger and fries gone.

Archie ditched her.

Archie hasn’t seen her in eight weeks, and now he’s ditched her.

She slips the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she slides out of the booth, but just as she reaches the exit, she skids to a stop. Three booths past the doorway, she sees the back of a familiar head, dark hair curling out from beneath a knit gray cap.

“Jughead?” she blurts out.

He turns around, the surprise on his face mirroring her own. “Hey.”

Without knowing why – it’s not like they’re really _friends_ , not since middle school, anyway – she steps closer, coming to stand at the edge of his table. He’s got a laptop open in front of him, and a half-full cup of coffee next to an empty basket of fries. Something about him looks different, she thinks as he tilts his chin up to look at her, though she can’t pinpoint what it is. His face is thinner, maybe. More angular.

“How are you?” she asks, good manners kicking in, as always.

“Uh…no worse than usual, I guess,” he says, and takes his coffee cup in hand, but doesn’t drink it. “What about you? Weren’t you away somewhere this summer?”

“Yeah, I was in LA for eight weeks for an internship. I just got back yesterday. Archie was supposed to meet me here, but he had to cancel.”

She says the last bit casually, like it’s nothing at all – at least, she _thinks_ she does – but something in Jughead’s expression shifts.

“That sucks,” he says, and sets the coffee cup back to the side. He tugs his laptop a little closer to himself, and nods his head towards the other side of the booth. “Did you want to sit down, or…?”

She hadn’t really expected an invitation – she isn’t sure _what_ she’d expected, when she’d decided to walk over here – but it’s not like she’s got anything better to do. Her mom isn’t expecting her home for at least two hours. And if she _does_ show up at home this early, she’ll be greeted with a raised eyebrow and a biting comment about how unreliable ‘that boy’ is.

“Sure,” she agrees, and scoots into the seat across from him. Jughead shuts his laptop.

He clasps both hands around his coffee mug again, drumming his fingertips against the ceramic. “So what was the internship?”

“It was with a publishing house.”

“That’s really cool,” he says, and sounds like he means it. He would, she supposes; Jughead’s always been one of the only kids who could be depended on to actually read the novels assigned to them for English class. She’s also pretty sure that he’s a writer himself. In fact, it’s probably the reason he had a laptop with him at the diner in the first place.

“It sounds more glamorous than it actually was,” she admits. “Lots of coffee runs and like, data entry. My office didn’t even have a window. But I did get to meet Toni Morrison at a book signing.” She feels her mouth curl up automatically as she says it, the smile that spreads across her face every time she thinks about that day, about the fact that she’d actually been able to come face to face with her literary hero, and tell her exactly what her words meant to Betty.

“Toni Morrison? You like her?”

“I _love_ her,” Betty gushes, and he laughs a little in response, though not in an unkind way. “She’s probably my favorite writer of all time.”

“That’s awesome, Betty.” The soft, half-smile on his lips strikes her as a rare offering from Jughead, and something warm settles in her chest when he meets her eyes across the table.

 _Oh yeah,_ she thinks, _Jughead is_ **_nice_**. Beneath the prickly, sarcastic exterior, he’d always been nice – helping her clean up the mess when she knocked over a bottle of paint in art class, letting her take the last slice of pizza in the lunch line. Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that.

“You should check out some of her books,” Betty says, leaning forward a little with her elbows on the table. “Like, _Beloved_ – it’s pretty intense? But it’s so good.”

“I mean, if it’s got the Betty Cooper stamp of approval, I’m basically sold.”

She smiles at him again, and tilts her head. “What did you do this summer?”

Jughead looks down at his coffee, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “Uh, not too much,” he says. “I’ve been working at the Twilight.”

Betty waits for him to continue, but he says nothing, fiddling with his cup.

It’s been a while since she and Jughead were anything resembling _close_ (and maybe, she thinks with a sinking feeling, they never really had been. Maybe they’d simply orbited the same redheaded boy at more or less the same time, and nothing more.) But she can still tell when he’s hiding something. And right now, she’s pretty sure that he is.

But it’s not her place to go digging. She’s not even sure how she _would_.

“That’s cool,” she says.

To her right, someone clears their throat – it’s the same waitress from before, looking vaguely irritated. “Do you want to order something _now_?”

Betty takes only a moment to consider her options. “No thank you,” she says, and looks back at Jughead, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I should be getting home. I’ll let you get back to your…” She trails off, looking pointedly at the laptop.

“Oh. Yeah, okay.” She’s almost certain that she’s imagining the hint of disappointment in his voice. _He’s probably relieved_ , she tells herself. _He’s probably dying to get back to whatever it is he was doing before I interrupted him._

“I’ll see you at school,” she says, and he nods, already flipping his laptop open again. _Yep. Definitely relieved._

Betty waves a hand goodbye at Pop as she leaves. She pauses at the exit, one hand on the door, and looks back, but all she sees is Jughead’s hat, the hunch of his shoulders as he leans over his computer, typing away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**two**

“Truth or dare?”

Jughead looks up from his book, startled. “What?”

Betty smirks, leaning one hip against the counter where he’s seated. “You heard me.”

Jughead folds down the corner of his page and closes the book, setting it down beside him. “It’s more that I don’t know why you’re asking me a question I literally haven’t heard since eighth grade, while we’re both in the middle of a shift.”

“There’s no one here,” she says, waving her arm around the near-empty diner. “Just that guy and the coffee he’s been drinking for over an hour.”

“Yeah, I’d been meaning to ask you – is he dead?”

Betty laughs, and he can’t help but smile at the sound. “I’ll check.”

He watches as she picks up the coffee pot and makes her way around the counter to the booth where their sole customer is sitting, her tight blonde ponytail swinging in tandem with her hips as she walks. The man moves his head when she asks him if he’d like a refill, confirming that he is indeed alive, and when she looks over her shoulder to wink at Jughead, a thousand butterflies erupt into flight in his stomach.

A thousand annoying, unwelcome butterflies. Because Jughead had told himself he wouldn’t do this – wouldn’t form a crush on a coworker, on a Northsider, on a girl he’ll never see again once the summer ends two weeks from now and she heads back to college in Chicago.

He’s still not sure how he’d never noticed her before Pop hired her on as a server back in May, because it’s nearly impossible to keep his eyes off of her now. She’d claimed that she and her friends had hung out at the diner every week during high school – she’d even claimed to recognize _him_ , thanks to the ever-present beanie he wore morning, noon and night. But then, Pop’s had always been the place where Jughead came to escape the rest of the world, to retreat into his headphones and his laptop and his bottomless cup of coffee and block out everything else. Including pretty girls with blinding white smiles and the brightest green eyes he’s ever seen in his life.

Now it’s the place where he comes five nights a week to flip burgers and earn the cash he’s squirreling away so that he can – fingers crossed – transfer to a four-year program to earn his B.A. once he’s done his final semester at the community college. But he still has those moments of escape from time to time, moments when the rest of the world fades away: when he’s deep into his pre-shift prep routine, or when his favorite song comes on over the speakers, an old Solomon Burke tune he’d first heard as a kid, right here in the diner itself.

(When he’s lost in a conversation with Betty, so caught up in her words that he doesn’t even notice a burger patty getting a little _too_ charred on the grill behind him.)

Betty places the coffee pot back in the machine and reappears at his side, arms crossed over her chest. “Nice job stalling, by the way. Truth or dare?”

“Is this what you spent all your time doing at your lame Northside parties? Or is this something you picked up in Chicago?”

“ _Juggie_.” She shakes her head. “Obviously both.”

Jughead heaves a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Truth.”

She taps her index finger against her chin and asks, “Who’s your favorite person in the world?”

He’d expected something a little more… _probing_ , given how eager she seemed to ask him a question, but he’ll take it. “My sister.”

Betty smiles. “I didn’t know you had a sister. Older or younger?”

“Six years younger. She’s thirteen.”

“Aw. Doesn’t she ever come by for a free milkshake or anything?”

Here it is, he thinks: the probing part. “She actually lives in Ohio. With my mom.”

“Oh.” Betty’s eyes grow a fraction wider, but before she can say anything else, he says,

“My turn. Truth or dare?”

“Hmm.” Betty purses her lips in thought. “Dare.”

Jughead surveys the room, mind scrambling for something that won’t send Pop’s liability insurance through the roof, or either of them on unemployment. His eyes land on the man with the coffee.

Before he can think better of it, he says, “I dare you to go give that guy his check.”

Betty studies him for a moment. “That’s it? Just give him his check?”

Jughead nods. “That’s it.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, and turns away to tap at the screen of the POS system, printing out his tab.

The man looks startled when she deposits the bill in front of him, but he drops a few dollars on the tabletop with surprising speed for someone who only ten minutes ago had had the appearance of the potentially-deceased. Regardless, as Jughead had hoped, he’s out the door within sixty seconds.

“He left me _three quarters_ for a tip,” Betty grumbles as she joins him behind the counter again, nonetheless pocketing the change.

“And you did _such_ a good job refilling his coffee twice in three hours,” Jughead teases. She sticks her tongue out in response.

Quiet settles over them, nothing but the sound of the jukebox playing an old doo-wop number at the other end of the diner. It’s one a.m. on a Tuesday night, and they’re alone.

“Well, I completed your very unremarkable dare,” Betty says, breaking the silence. “So what’ll it be?”

Jughead swallows, steeling himself for what he _thinks_ they both know is coming next. “Truth.”

She glances back over her shoulder towards the front door, seeming to wrestle with herself over the question. When she turns back to Jughead, there’s hint of a flush on her cheeks he’s almost certain wasn’t there before. “Did you want him to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Jughead shakes his head. “You don’t get _multiple_ truths.”

“Fine.” She meets his gaze, lifting an eyebrow in challenge. “Dare.”

 _This could go so very, very wrong,_ he thinks.

But the chance that it could go right?

“Come here,” he says.

A beat passes, and then she steps closer, close enough that he’s pretty sure he can feel the heat radiating off of her body. Betty looks up at him, her lips slightly parted. Jughead presses his fingers into his thighs. He can’t touch her. Not yet.

“Truth,” he says.

A look he can’t quite place flickers over her face. “Will you miss me?” she asks him, voice soft, eyes uncertain. “When I leave for Chicago?”

“Yes.” His voice catches on the word.

“Truth.”

“Will you miss _me_?”

Betty nods.

Jughead sucks in a breath. “Truth.”

Her eyes fall to his lips. “Do you want to kiss me right now?”

He hesitates, and says, “More than anything.”

“Dare me,” she murmurs, but he doesn’t have to, because then their lips meet, his hands cupping her jaw, her fingers sliding through his hair.

And – just like it always has for Jughead, when he’s at Pop’s – when he’s with Betty – the rest of the world melts away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**three**

Betty doesn’t normally talk to strangers.

But this particular stranger? Dressed in a plaid jacket, seated in the booth next to hers at Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe? He’s practically begging for her to strike up a conversation. Sure, he’s typing away a mile a minute at his laptop – but he’s also got a hardback copy of _A Drowning at Sweetwater_ right beside him, two full weeks before it’s due to hit shelves.

She’d finished it just a few days ago, having finagled an advance copy for herself through Veronica’s connections at Penguin Random House _._ Frankly, she’s been dying to talk about it with someone ever since she turned the final page. But she hadn’t expected the opportunity to arise while she was in Riverdale itself, visiting her sister’s family in the very town where the book was set – the town where they’d lived until Betty was six years old.

Betty doesn’t talk to strangers, and she doesn’t believe in fate. But this is just too great of a coincidence to pass up.

She watches the dark-haired man for a few minutes, hoping he’ll look up from his screen and catch her eye, but no dice. Eventually she decides to just go for it. Clearing her throat, she raises her voice and says, “That’s a really good book.”

He looks up at her right away, seeming frazzled, blinking rapidly as though he’s staring into a bright light. “I’m sorry?”

Betty slides to the end of her booth, angling her body towards him. Now that she’s closer, she can see his face a bit better – can see that he’s handsome, and also oddly familiar. He looks sort of like the barista in the coffee shop across the street from her apartment building, she decides. But better.

“I said, that book is really good.” She points to the hardcover sitting right in front of him, just in case he’s somehow forgotten it’s there.

The man glances at the book before turning back to Betty. “You’ve read it?”

“Literally just last week,” Betty says. “A friend of mine owns a stake in the publishing company, so she got me an early copy.”

“Ah.” He shifts more fully towards her now, propping one elbow on the table, his hand coming to rest on top of the book. “So what’d you think?”

“I thought it was fascinating,” she says. “You know it’s based on a true story, right?”

“Yeah, I think that’s kind of the big selling point.”

“Only because no one’s read it yet,” she says. “I mean, you can tell it’s a first novel, but the way he weaves the different points-of-view together – it’s really impressive. I actually kind of forgot that I already knew how it would end.”

The man presses his lips together, looking down at his hand on the book for a moment. “I don’t know, you didn’t think it was a little…predictable? Prosaic?”

“Not at all.” Betty raises an eyebrow. “But it sounds like you didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.”

His mouth quirks up into something that could almost be considered a smile. “It was alright.”

“Maybe I’m a little biased,” she admits, taking a sip of her milkshake. “I’ll read anything with a murder mystery. Plus I used to live here in Riverdale, and my sister lives here now with her kids, and I actually sort of knew the author, so.”

“Wait.” He leans towards her, a new intensity to his gray-blue eyes. “You knew the author?”

“Well, we were best friends in like, kindergarten,” she admits. She certainly doesn’t know him now. In fact, it had taken her some time to connect his published name, J.F.P. Jones, to the name she’d known him by – Jughead – but then she’d remembered his ridiculously elaborate full name, and the abbreviation had made more sense. “We moved away when I was six, so I haven’t spoken to him in decades. It’s really cool that he’s getting all this buzz, though.”

The man doesn’t answer, just stares at her, for a long enough time that it starts to feel uncomfortable. She’s considering dropping a few tens on the tabletop and leaving when he says, in a voice so soft she almost can’t hear it, “Betty?”

Her heart skips a beat.

“Betty…Cooper?” he says, a little louder.

She feels strangely numb, her body running cold and then hot all over. _How does he know my name?_

“It’s me,” he says. “It’s Jughead.”

“Oh my god.” Her hand flies to her chest on instinct. “ _Juggie?_ ”

“Yes!” he exclaims, drawing a few looks in their direction from the other patrons. He lowers his voice, looking embarrassed. “I – god, I _thought_ you looked familiar.”

“Me too!” Betty grabs her purse and her milkshake and practically jumps into the seat across from him, her feet bumping up against his beneath the table as she settles in. “I must not have recognized you without that little hat you always wore!”

Jughead laughs, rubbing a hand over his messy black hair. “Honestly, I wore that thing _way_ longer than was socially acceptable.”

“This is so crazy.” Betty presses her hands against her cheeks, and the size of her own smile catches her by surprise. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

“I know.” His grin is so wide she thinks it must hurt. “You’re visiting your sister? Her name is…?”

“Polly,” she says. “She’s married with two kids.”

“That’s great.” She doesn’t miss the way his eyes flit to her own left hand. “And you?”

“No kids,” she says. “Currently single. In New York, so, plenty of fish, et cetera. And you, are you – do you live here?”

Jughead shakes his head. “I’m visiting my dad for a few days before the book launch. I live in Boston now. With a roommate, who I’ll be ditching soon as long as this thing does okay.” He pats the book fondly.

“That’s really great,” she says. “ _Really_ great.”

“Wow. Betty Cooper,” he says, and there’s something about the way he says her name – she wants to hear him say it again. “Talk about fate.”

“Talk about fate,” she echoes. “Jughead Jones.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**four**

She knew that he would be here.

She knew that he would be here, and she came anyway.

He looks up when she walks through the door, and their eyes meet for only a moment before she turns her gaze towards Veronica, who’s seated beside him. It’s the booth where they always used to sit, the four of them together, where she’d curl up close beneath the crook of Jughead’s arm and hold his hand beneath the table.

She can’t help but note that her friends are seated much more strategically now, so that she has to sit neither next to nor across from Jughead, even though Archie and Veronica are very much a couple, and probably longing for the comfort of one another’s touch right now. _You’re good friends_ , she wants to tell them. _The very best._

“How’s Kevin?” Veronica asks, as soon as Betty’s settled into her seat. The wake had ended hours ago, but Betty had stayed behind to help clean up, and – in theory, at least – to spend time with Kevin before heading back down to Maryland in the morning.

She lets out a long breath. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess? He’s got so much family around it was hard to talk to him.”

She’s barely talked to him at all, truth be told, ever since her mother had phoned her with the news: that Sheriff Keller had been shot in a drug sting gone bad last Saturday evening, and hadn’t made it through the night.

It hadn’t felt like the sort of conversation you should have with one of your closest friends over the phone, and so she hadn’t. But just over a week later, she hasn’t really had _any_ conversation about it with him, and the longer she waits, the harder it becomes to initiate.

They order burgers and fries, but the only one who really seems able to eat is Jughead, and even he sticks to his own plate, uncharacteristically leaving the others’ leftovers untouched. They chat idly about their classes, their plans for winter break, Archie’s mom’s upcoming wedding in Chicago. It’s not awkward, exactly, but it’s also not entirely comfortable, never quite managing to settle into the easy repartee they’d once all shared.

Betty’s heart aches. She loves these people, loves them with a fierceness and a depth she’s not sure will ever be matched – but it’s been three years now since they parted ways, and it’s not the same.

Not long after their plates are cleared, Archie says that they’ve got to get going; he and Veronica have to be back in the city in time for his eleven a.m. history class. Betty hugs them goodbye in the parking lot, hot tears sharp on her skin in the bitter night air.

When she turns away Jughead is still there behind her, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket.

Neither speaks at first – neither _wants_ to be the first – but she doesn’t want to leave, either. Betty wraps her arms around her middle, shivering slightly. She remembers the nights when he’d do that job for her, leaning in close, breathing hot air against her neck until she giggled.

“How’s your boyfriend?”

 _Of course,_ she thinks, _of course that’s what you’d ask_. But there is a part of her that’s pleased, because it means – it means maybe she’s not the only one who has these thoughts sometimes, thoughts of _them_ , of what they used to be. Her stomach twists, guilt and something else – something more delicate – racing through her blood.

Jughead had only met Adam once, on a weekend trip that he and Betty had made so he could meet her parents. Alice and Hal had both loved him, and at the time she couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was love for Adam himself, and how much of it was sheer relief that they could finally replace the mental image of a boy in a leather jacket and a ratty old beanie at their dining room table with someone else, someone who ironed his shirts and combed his hair in the morning and wore cologne.

She never would have brought Adam to Riverdale that weekend if she’d thought Jughead would actually be in town. In fact, she had specifically chosen that weekend because she knew it was J.B.’s birthday, and he’d most likely be away, visiting her in Ohio.

As it turned out, that was the first year their mother had permitted J.B. to visit Jughead instead of the other way around. They’d run into each other at the Bijou, J.B. and Jughead laden down with birthday snacks, Betty and Adam simply trying to escape her overbearing parents for a few hours.

The drive home after the movie had been the most uncomfortable twenty minutes of her and Adam’s entire ten-month relationship at that point. _So that was him? That’s Jughead?_

She’d clammed up, stared out the window in silence until they’d pulled back into her parents’ driveway.

“He’s good,” she says, rubbing her hands together in an effort to warm her fingers. “He might graduate a semester early.”

Wordlessly, Jughead pulls off his leather gloves and hands them to Betty. “Jug, no. I’m fine,” she says softly, pressing them back into his hands.

“Betty.” All he has to do is say her name and she gives in, slipping her cold fingers into the gloves, the warmth of his skin still lingering in the lining.

Betty fiddles with the gloves for longer than necessary, trying to work out what to say next. She settles on, “How are _you_ , Jug?”

He shrugs, and for a moment he looks exactly the way she remembers him looking back at the start of high school, back before she loved him, when every movement of his body seemed to apologize for its presence. “I’m fine.”

 _You’re not_ , she thinks. _You can’t be._

She doesn’t know how long he’d kept in touch with Sweet Pea after leaving for college upstate, or whether he’d kept in touch at all. After all, he’d broken up with her before he’d broken it off with the Serpents. But Sheriff Keller hadn’t been the only casualty that night. _It is still unknown_ , the article in the Register had stated, _whether Lee, known to associates as “Sweet Pea,” was an active member of the drug ring or merely an informant caught in the crossfire._

“I keep thinking –”

He stops, and shakes his head a little. Betty frowns. “What?”

Jughead tilts his head back, looking up at the sky. Even in the dark she can see the moles on his neck, dark against his pale skin, and she thinks of the way she used to trace them as they lay in bed together, connecting them like constellations with her fingertips. “I keep thinking about that day we went to the river with Toni and Fangs and – you know. Do you remember?”

She remembers. It was summer, the hot, swampy middle of summer, about a month before the beginning of their senior year. She wasn’t a Serpent, not officially, anyway, but at that point it had become clear to the rest of them that she and Jughead were something of a package deal, so everyone more or less tolerated her presence at the Wyrm and the occasional cookout or bonfire party on the Southside.

The day he’s talking about – it was unremarkable, really, just an afternoon spent lounging in the sun, splashing around in the water. She doesn’t remember much about Sweet Pea from that day, specifically, other than the fact that he’d really loved to do cannonballs.

What she remembers most clearly is this: Jughead had pulled her downstream to a more private spot while the others replenished their sunscreen, and they’d spent nearly an hour making out on top of a big, warm slab of rock in the sun, only to regret the rendezvous later that night when they realized how badly they’d both been sunburned.

“I do,” she says. “It was fun.”

“It _was_ , right?” he says. “God, it was so fun. I just…” He pauses, rubbing at one of his eyes with his fingers, and she realizes with a pang that he’s crying. “I don’t believe for a _second_ he would’ve been working with the Ghoulies. There’s no way.”

Betty doesn’t know what to say, and so she does what comes naturally: she steps forward, and she wraps her arms around Jughead, and she runs her hand up his neck, cupping the back of his head, when he presses his face against her shoulder.

 _I miss you_ , she thinks. It’s not the first time she’s thought it in the last three years, but it’s the closest she’s come to saying it out loud.

He doesn’t say it either, but she feels it, hanging in the air between them like a cloud of breath; in the steady thrum of his heartbeat, in his hands, fisted into the back of her coat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**five**

“You’re being so weird today,” Betty remarks as they turn the corner, the familiar glow of Pop’s neon lights coming into view.

A cold lick of anxiety peels down Jughead’s spine. “What do you mean?”

She shrugs, swinging their hands where they’re clasped between them. “I don’t know. Just…climbing into Archie’s treehouse this morning, and then going to see the high school – you’re not usually this nostalgic about Riverdale.”

“Well, I’m a weirdo, Betty,” he says lightly, and she snorts, bumping her arm against his as they walk.

She’s not wrong. (Betty Cooper is rarely wrong.) But she’s also missing a key piece of information, which is that there’s a reason for their stroll down memory lane today, and it’s that he plans to end it with a picnic and champagne on the bank of the Sweetwater River, where he’ll ask her to be his wife.

They have one more stop before that, though: Pop’s, where they’ll share a milkshake and sit in the booth where twelve years ago she’d shown him the scars on her palms, where he’d kissed them, where he’d first realized that he loved this girl, jagged edges and all.

It’s a good plan, he thinks, and it’s all going pretty smoothly. That is, until he walks through the front door of Pop’s a minute later, and comes face to face with a scene straight out of his nightmares: everyone they know, gathered together on one side of the diner, surrounded by streamers and cake and a big banner that screams _CONGRATULATIONS BETTY AND JUGHEAD!_

Jughead feels Betty freeze beside him, and then his body goes on autopilot. “Nope,” he says, and grabs her hand, tugging her in the opposite direction. “Nope, nope, nope.”

He doesn’t stop until they reach the bathrooms, and – thank goodness – find the unisex single stall unoccupied. He pulls Betty inside, locks the door, and then slumps against the sink, burying his face in his hands.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he says.

“Jughead.” Betty looks shellshocked, her eyes as wide as saucers, a section of hair coming loose from her normally-pristine ponytail. “What _was_ that? And – what are we doing in here?”

His heart sinks even as his palms begin to sweat. Of course. Of course he’s going to have to do this _here –_ in a bathroom stall, in a greasy spoon diner, while her best friend and his best friend and her _parents_ and god knows who else stand around outside, waiting for them to emerge.

The odds that this is going to end the way he hopes it will are growing longer by the second.

“I need you to know that this isn’t what I intended, okay?” Jughead swallows hard, pulling a folded-up piece of paper out of his pocket as he takes a step towards her. Keeping his eyes on hers, he lowers himself to the ground, down on one knee, and tries not to think about how dirty the floor must be – what other choice does he have?

His hands are shaking as he unfolds the paper, he realizes with horror, and as his eyes land on the words he’d written for her – the words he’d agonized over for days – he realizes he can’t say them. Not while he’s within arm’s reach of a urinal cake.

“I wrote you this whole thing,” he says miserably, waving the paper in the air. “I don’t – it’s not something you’re supposed to hear next to a _toilet._ ”

“It’s okay.” Betty’s face has turned entirely pink, and he’d probably find it adorable if it wasn’t so terrifying in the present context. “You can read it to me later.”

“Okay,” he says, “okay,” and tucks it into his back pocket. He reaches into his other pocket, the front one, and pulls out the little box he’s been carrying around with him since lunchtime.

Betty gasps at the sight of it, though the fact that he’s on bended knee really should have tipped her off to his intentions by now.

“Elizabeth Cooper,” he says, struggling to keep his voice level. “ _Betty_ Cooper. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever known in my entire life, and I love you. I love your smile, and your empathy, and your warmth, and your intelligence, and your fierce sense of justice, and your amazing brownies, and the fact that you’ve somehow never seen _The Godfather_ even though it’s the greatest movie ever made, and I could go on, but this tile is really starting to hurt my knee.”

Betty laughs, pressing her hands to her mouth as he stands up and steps closer, opening the box with one hand as he cradles it in the other.

“I’m so in love with you, Betty, and I want to spend my whole life showing you how much.” Jughead tilts his head down towards her, and for a moment, with her eyes shining up at him, he completely forgets where they are. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is _her_. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” She nods so enthusiastically she nearly knocks her forehead into his own. “Of course, Jug. Of _course_.”

They slide the ring onto her finger together – it’s slightly too big, he notes with a fleeting whiff of dismay – and then they’re kissing, a sloppy, heated kiss, exactly the kind of kiss that befits a dingy bathroom stall in a suburban diner. (So at least he got one thing right.)

For a moment Jughead feels like he’s sixteen again, so completely caught up in this girl that everything else fades to the background, so completely bowled over that she’s chosen _him_ – chosen him forever, now – when all along she could have chosen anyone. _Anyone._

Betty pulls away first, her face flushed, her eyes dark. “Do you want to –”

“Have a quickie?” he interjects, toying with the hem of her sweater. “I mean, it’s a little awkward with everyone outside, but I’m up for it.”

“Juggie, _no_ ,” she laughs, pushing him away with one hand – her left hand, which she then leaves in the air between them, admiring the glittery, cluster-stone ring on her fourth finger. (He’ll never admit it, but Veronica’s smiling emoji of approval when he’d texted her a photo of the ring – an opal, an apricot sapphire, and a tiny diamond arranged in a trio – had possibly been one of the proudest moments of his life.)

“I was going to say we should probably go back out there,” she says. “We’ve been in here for like, ten minutes.”

Jughead sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.” He takes her hand, toying with the ring, sliding it back and forth on her finger. “Is this okay? That everyone’s here? I wasn’t sure, but Veronica insisted you’d want a party afterwards.”

And despite his own feelings about parties – especially parties thrown in his honor – he’d decided Veronica was right. Betty _would_ want to celebrate with her friends and her family. If that meant he had to suffer through a few hours of chit chat and photos and dumb sexual innuendo that didn’t even make sense for two people who had been cohabiting for six years – so be it.

“It’s totally okay,” Betty assures him. “It’s amazing. How often do we get all the people we love together in one room anymore?”

When they push the door open Veronica is there waiting on the other side, pacing back and forth in her four-inch heels, looking more distraught than Jughead’s ever seen her.

“I fucked up so bad, you guys,” she says immediately, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I got these wires crossed, but I was _so certain_ you wanted to do the party here, Jughead, and I thought it was weird, but I also wanted to be respectful, because it’s _your_ engagement, and I just looked back at the original email you sent and it’s _completely_ obvious that that’s not what you meant _at all_ —”

“V,” Betty says gently, placing a hand on her best friend’s arm. “It’s okay. Look! We’re engaged!”

She holds up her hand for Veronica to see, and the other girl bursts into tears, throwing her arms around Betty.

“I love you _so much,_ B, and I swear to god your actual wedding is going to be _perfect_ even if it _kills me_ ,” Veronica sobs. Jughead takes a step back and gives them a moment, trying not to think about the fact that Veronica Lodge is clearly going to bridezilla her way through his and Betty’s entire wedding planning process if they don’t set some pretty firm boundaries before the end of the night.

It only takes a minute or two for Betty to soothe Veronica back down to her usual unfrazzled state. Veronica smooths her hands over her blouse, nodding at them briskly. “So you’re ready to face your adoring public? I’ll give them a heads up.”

Betty turns to face him, taking both of his hands in her own. She squeezes them. “I’m so happy right now. Whatever bullshit my mom or Polly or – or I don’t know, Reggie? Is he even here? – whatever bullshit they give you, it doesn’t matter. Ignore it. I’m so, _so_ happy, Jug.”

For the first time all night, heat pricks at the back of Jughead’s eyes, and he lifts a hand to wipe at a stray tear that’s escaped down his cheek, never letting go of hers in the process. He presses his lips to one of her palms, then the other. “I’m happy, too.”

She stands up on her tiptoes, leaning in for a sweet, simple kiss. “Then let’s do this.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a prompt that the wonderful sullypants sent me on tumblr: "Here’s a fic title - This Must Be the Place. What would this story be about?"
> 
> My answer was "hmm probably a five things type fic about Bughead at Pop's?" and then somehow that turned into...this!
> 
> If you enjoyed it, I hope you'll leave a comment here, and you can also come say hi on tumblr - I'm at imreallyloveleee.
> 
> Title is from the song by the Talking Heads!


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